May Book Club Pick: Such a Fun Age (Chapters 15-21)

Hi book bloggers!

I’m in a book club that meets weekly to discuss one book per month. I write up summaries + discussion questions each week, and I welcome you to use them or transform them for your own enjoyment! Feel free to chat in the comments about your thoughts on the read. Read the summaries and discussion questions for the first quarter of the book, Chapters 1-7 here or the second quarter, Chapters 8-14 here.

About the Book:

Synopsis: “Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains’ toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store’s security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right.

But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix’s desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix’s past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.

With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone “family,” the complicated reality of being a grown up, and the consequences of doing the right thing for the wrong reason. “

 

Week 3: Chapters 15-21: 

• Chapter 15 – Thanksgiving dinner. Kelley reveals how he really met Emira.
• Chapter 16 – Everybody pushes Emira into choosing a pathway, re: graduate school & career opportunities. It ends with Briar vomiting.
• Chapter 17 – Alix has a flashback to her first time w Kelley. She hones in on Kelley touching Emira. She gets jealous.
• Chapter 18 – Emira and Briar talk about parents having ‘favourites’. Kelley takes Emira to a cowboy bar, and tells her to quit her job. Emira then claps back! Kelley spills the beans: Alix had a black-baby sitter when she was a high schooler. She’s obsessed.
• Chapter 19 – Alix stalked Kelley on all social media. All of his past gfs were black. Alix confides with her girl group; they say it definitely is a fetish. They implore her to come back to NY to work.
• Chapter 20 – Emira’s week-long baby-sitting marathon with Briar. Emira has an epiphany: she loves taking care of children.
• Chapter 21 – Part 4: Alix rushes to tell Emira about Kelley fetishising women. Emira blows it off. Alix then goes to have a ‘chat’ with Kelley, and he claps back! She denies being a racist, and they squabble about their past. Alix comes home, she hasn’t written her 50-paged draft, her publisher/editor is NOT happy. Alix realises she left her newborn baby at home ALONE. It ends with her calling her nemesis, her husband’s co-host, for help.

 

Discussion Questions:

This is Alix.

1. How weird was it when an entire chapter (#17) honed in on Kelley’s hand touching Emira? And the fact that she was fantasying about him, but then got possessive over Emira!?!? PSYCHO.
2. What do you think about Alix going back to NY? Just for one or two days per week? Do you think it’ll improve her relationships with others, including her husband, Emira, and perhaps herself? What about her children?
3. Chapter 21 dropped a lot of bombs. It’s building up to the climax. What do you think will follow now, since Alix and Kelley had their showdown?
4. Alix is so freaking defensive that she is not a racist; and absolutely critiques the sellout of Kelley’s fetishising. Do you think it’s her projecting her own fetish over black women?
5. What do YOU believe is best for Emira? Should she keep doing what she’s doing, or should she leave her job, leave her boyfriend, pursue grad school etc?
6. Do you think Kelley really does have a fetish?
7. Who’s backstory/perspective do you believe and agree with more? Kelley’s or Alix’s?

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Oh my goodness. Read this book. Join in on the discourse. GO! 

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